CAM system for filament winding on elbows

The elbow, as a joint part of tubes, is a necessary pipe-fitting in composite products. However, there is no efficient CAM system for winding elbows due to the lack of reliable mathematical models. To our knowledge, existent systems all adopted approximate methods to design and produce elbows, which usually result in unstable fiber paths such as slippage and bridging. In this paper, a new mathematical model consisting of geodesics, semi-geodesics and stable splines is presented for fiber path design, and mathematical principles and algorithm are given for machine path calculation. On the basis of these theories, a CAM system for the production of composite elbows is developed. The experimental results demonstrate that this system is highly effective.